Analytics

4 Things You Need to Know About Google Tag Manager

July 5, 2016 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Google Tag Manager is a free tool that makes it easy for marketers and IT professionals to add and update website tracking codes – including conversion tracking, site analytics, remarketing, and social media – with just a few clicks and without the need to edit your website tracking code. Google Tag Manager provides businesses with control of the tracking codes, usability for marketers and IT, the ability to share information with specific users’ permission, and integrations to measurement marketing code like Facebook. Tag Manager captures the data that can lead to better ROI, a reduction in marketing costs, and a lot of time saved for your team!

Below are 4 things you need to know about Google Tag Manager:

1. You Need a Measurement Plan

A measurement plan is a document that translates your organization’s goals and objectives into metrics so that you can keep track of your website and marketing. A measurement plan provides a framework for the configuration and implementation of digital marketing strategies on your website. Without a measurement plan, there is no structure for a tagging implementation strategy. There is no way to verify that you have the necessary information to measure your goals and objectives!

2. One Tracking Code to Measure Marketing Initiatives

With Tag Manager, you get one tracking code to measure your website and marketing initiatives. This consolidates all of your data into one location to foster better decision-making based on that data. There are tagging templates and integrations to combine tracking codes from Facebook, LinkedIn, AdWords, Google Trust Stores, and more. Just one Google Tag Manager code will increase your website speed and improve your customer’s online experience on desktops, tablets, and mobile phones.

3. Google Tag Manager works for Web & Mobile Apps

Your Google Tag Manager tracking code should be added to your existing website code. As mentioned in the previous section, this Google Tag Manager code will work on responsive websites (for desktops, tablets, and mobile phones). Specifically for mobile phones, the implementation of Google Tag Manager for Mobile Apps is done with Firebase SDK. Firebase is a Google tool and infrastructure that is used to build better mobile apps and grows businesses by developers. Firebase SDK works for both Android and iOS to track behavior and actions that are specific to mobile apps and indicate success for businesses.

4. Better Measurement of ROI with Google Tag Manager

Too often, marketing and IT professionals work to get a website and mobile app live while neglecting to identify how they plan to measure success. With Google Tag Manager, both marketing and IT professionals have the ability to create and capture metrics that are needed to determine success as well as improve upon that success. The accessibility of integrations and templates make it easier to collect metrics within a single console. Overall, you get better data, better metrics, and better decision-making with Google Tag Manager. This means more money in your bucket and less time and money wasted!

Check out Google Tag Manager resources or contact DaBrian Marketing Group today!

Tips for Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting with Google Analytics

March 14, 2016 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting with Google Analytics

Good morning. My name is Daniel Laws, and I am the Principal Owner of DaBrian Marketing Group, an advertising agency in Reading, PA. I’ve been fielding a few questions around Enhanced Ecommerce reporting with Google Analytics. Today, what I want to talk about is exactly that, Enhanced Ecommerce reporting with Google Analytics. What I’m going to address today is what it is, and first and foremost, how is it different from the existing reporting that’s there. Also, how do you set it up? When you should set it up, where to set it up, as well as who needs to be involved in setting up those elements. Why you should care. What’s the value for your business for you to have those pieces set up.

With that being said, I’d like to kick this off with a little bit of information. Don’t mind me. I’m looking at dual screens here where I’ll drag a few things in, and obviously try to show you what I can. Obviously because of confidentiality with some of our clients and showing you their Google Analytics, can’t necessarily do that, but I’ll do my best to make it as informative, and give you the appropriate resources, and also load this information to our blog so that you might be able to get links directly to the assets. With that being said, I’m going to kick this off. Bear with me one moment while I share my screen. First and foremost, what I want to talk about is what is Enhanced reporting. With that being said, we’ve got Enhanced reporting. What you can see here is Enhanced reporting is going to give you more granular information than what you would get typically from Google Analytics as it pertains to shopping behavior, performance behavior, sales, product performance, sales performance. Those types of components will be more informative to you.

I’m looking for the screenshot here of something that’s actually going to be of value. What you can see here in this particular area is that it’s able to give you information as far as shopping activity, where the abandonments are happening simply from the shopping behavior components, as far as adding things to the cart, abandonment from cart, abandonment from checkout, those types of pieces. It can give you more information as well but at a high-level, I think one of the things that you’re going to be able to see … I know you’re going to be able to see is the shopping behavior, as well as a number of other items that will help you to make better business decisions around what sales items are working, perhaps identifying opportunities to fix the site, what have you.

How is this different from AdWords Shopping? From an AdWords Shopping perspective, you’re going to get high level information as far as clicks. You’re going to get information as far as Ecommerce revenue, conversion rate, those types of things, cost per click, to be a little bit specific. It’s going to give you some of those components if you’re running shopping. Obviously, this is a blank scenario. That’s why I used it in a test environment, so to speak. Obviously, it’s going to give you that type of information within the reporting, which is uniquely different than what you’re going to get from an overview of shopping behavior types of components. Now, what we’re looking at is shopping related information, revenue affiliates, campaigns, transactions. Those types of things are going to populate within the shopping. As you can see, it’s rather different than the other components.

The other piece of this is how do you set it up. I think one of the best resources that are out there are … Obviously you’re going to want to go to the Enhanced Ecommerce reporting section. Again, I’ll put this link towards the conclusion of the video. You’re going to want to get that information around Enhanced reporting. How you set it up can be complicated. I don’t want to say it’s very complicated, but it can be complicated in some scenarios. You want to make sure you have the most up to date analytics component there. What I mean by that is if you take a look, if you’re not on the most up to date Google Analytics version, if you’re not on analytics.js, you will run into issues and will need to migrate. Again, this is the information that’s there. You’ll need to migrate to that. You do have two options. You can migrate in an existing component or you can create a new property. In most cases people are going to want to have some of that historical data, be able to look at it in one fell swoop. The migration can become a little bit cumbersome in order to make that happen. Perhaps at a later date I’ll be able to shed some light on that for you as well.

You want to make sure that you have a measurement plan, first and foremost, before you go on this. Why are you doing what you need to do in order to capture this information? What metrics and KPIs? How are you going to troubleshoot and validate everything that’s there? Looking at some of those high-level components within the measurement plan … I’m not going to get into the details. If you haven’t done or looked at a measurement plan, I would recommend that you take a look at Google Analytics Academy, which gives you a high level overview of a measurement plan and how to break that down. Make sure that you have all those metrics, those elements, goals and objectives lined out prior to implementing the Enhanced Ecommerce reporting with Google Analytics.

When should you set this up? In most cases, people are already going to have some type of data already established, some campaigns, things that you’re already doing. I would say as quickly as humanly possible. The reason why I say that is it’s going to shed some light on a number of different areas, as I eluded to earlier, and perhaps help you to identify some low hanging fruit. With that being said, you want to do it now. If you can’t do it now, do you schedule regular updates for Google Analytics in order to roll out new capabilities? When you roll out those updated capabilities, I think that is when you’re going to want to take a look at updating the code and implementing the necessary components.

The reason why I say that is that it goes back to what you’re going to want to enable first and foremost, the tracking capabilities in itself and turn on Enhanced reporting. One of the prerequisites for this, as you can see here, is to turn on that particular element. That is inside the Admin Console. Due to confidentiality, obviously, I won’t show you that right now. If you want to go to that particular area, you go into Google Analytics. You go to Admin, and then you navigate to the view area of Ecommerce Settings, enable that particular piece, and that should be able to help you with some of those elements. Obviously you want to save, and then you want to implement the appropriate tags. That’s where it goes back to the Google developer components of what needs to be there and establishing that plug-in. It’s a great resource for that type of information as far as impression data, product data, and action data, as far as what needs to be required within updating that code.

Perhaps the other option for when you should set this up is when you roll out new products, new site features, whatever it might be, is incorporating that into that roll out if you can’t get it out now. You’ve heard me talk a little bit about the code, and updating the code, and what do you need, and those types of things. The other piece of this is who needs to be involved. To some degree you’re going to need somebody with some programming skills, familiarity with Google Analytics code, so a web analyst or someone who can obviously read through some of the material and the reference materials within the guides, and assist with those elements. In general, that’s going to be a programmer, somebody with familiarity with JavaScript, HTML, CSS if necessary. That’s generally not often required. It’s usually JavaScript, HTML code, PHP, those types of things, depending upon what your site is built on.

Where does this information go? Obviously, what you need is a site, as I eluded to before, you need to enable this inside your Google Analytics as I showed you before. You’re also going to want to have access and administrative access to Google Analytics when you bring the necessary parties involved. You may opt to implement this from a Tag Manager perspective. For the purposes of right now, I would say test it, get it up in the test environment. If you have the appropriate Google Analytics configuration, you’ll generally have an unfiltered view, a master view, and in the test view, I would say get those elements up and running first and foremost. If you’re going to use Tag Manager, make sure that you’re utilizing something within a test environment with Tag Manager to populate that information. When I say Tag Manager, I’m referring to Google Tag Manager specifically.

Why should you care? Number one, it integrates with your Ecommerce site, which is uniquely different from the shopping campaigns. The shopping campaigns and AdWords are very specific to you utilizing shopping campaigns via Google Analytics, no more no less. With the Enhanced Ecommerce Shopping, will allow you to gauge opt in opt … Not necessarily opt-in but abandonment rate, check out issues, sales performance issues, as it pertains to your Ecommerce site without running a campaign in its entirety, or without the necessity to have to run a campaign, if that makes sense. With that being said, it gives you an opportunity to improve revenues, increase revenues, identify broken processes that are impacting conversion rates. Why are people abandoning the shopping process? Why are people not putting items in the cart? At the same time, identifying ways to improve the average order value and the efficiency of your marketing. Where does the efficiency of your marketing come in? Comes very much so into play with internal promotions, and order coupons, and being able to get that information within Enhanced Ecommerce reporting with Google Analytics.

One of the other pieces of this, as I eluded to, is obviously the checkout, the shopping behavior, the checkout behavior analysis, their performance, product performance, sales performance. There’s also the internal promotions, order, and coupons just to name a few others that are going to provide you with information on what is working, what products are moving, what sales are performing well, do you modify things, and being able to collect that information based upon the measurement plan that I had mentioned earlier, and looking at those core metrics and being very focused on the goals and objectives to be able to pull out those insights and to do something about it.

With that being said, what’s the value to your business? The Bottom line is this information is going to help you to increase sales and revenue. It’s going to help you to improve marketing efficiency. It’s going to help you to prioritize items that are going to impact growth. One of the things that we often see is you have business owners that are running their business themselves and are handling their Ecommerce site, or working with a vendor directly, or they’ve got a marketing manager that is all encompassing. You’ve got a huge organization where not all of the pieces are connected. Where do you prioritize what’s going to have the maximum impact on the business?

By implementing the Enhanced Ecommerce reporting with Google Analytics, it gives you the opportunity to prioritize that information more specifically, look at those low hanging fruits that can impact revenue and growth, and to make sure that you can allocate time with things that are going to have the maximum impact, as opposed to trying to tackle everything. In most cases, there’s a lot to tackle from an Ecommerce perspective. We’re talking about SEO. We’re talking about advertising, paid search, banner ads, shopping campaigns, remarketing, a number of different things from an Ecommerce perspective, and retail perspective is everything from inventory ads.

Where do you prioritize your time? I think by enabling Enhanced reporting, it gives you a little bit more visibility into that. It gives you better metrics and allows you to justify advertising spent. Listen to me again, allows you to justify advertising spent. Many times we’re spending money on SEO. We’re spending money on pay per click. We’re spending money on email campaigns. We’re able to see what’s generating revenues, what items are being bogged down. You can slice and dice that data by segment, by marketing tactics so to speak, whether it’s the source medium. From a Google Analytics perspective, allow you to slice and dice that information and look at that shopping information very specifically.

With that being said, what I’ll do is I’ll load some of these resources to our blog when the video is live, point you in a right direction. Perhaps at a later date, we can get a little bit more granular on implementation of the code. Maybe we’ll get our buddy, our resident programmer webmaster here, Brett, to actually walk through some of those components for you. With that being said, thank you very much. Hope it was useful. Please let us know if we can add anything else of value. Thank you very much.

Resources:

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6014841?

https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3455481?https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade/

5 Tips to Jump Start Your Mobile Analytics

July 25, 2014 by Daniel Laws 1 Comment

Danny Laws, our principal owner, senior digital strategist, and chief dreadlocks connoisseur, covers his top tips to adopting mobile analytics*.

Learn to get your strategy in gear, your solutions configured, your reporting streamlined, and more!

Transcript

Hi, my name’s Danny Laws. I’m the principal owner of DaBrian Marketing Group. I’m also one of the co-chairs with Philadelphia Digital Analytics Association. I want speak to you today about mobile analytics. One of the things that we’re talking about mobile analytics right now in the space is that mobile search is on the rise, mobile usage is on the rise, whether it be a
tablet or a smartphone, and we want to talk about how to jump start your ability to collect that information and what you should be considering in order to get you moving down the path.

The first thing that we recommend here is connecting mobile analytics with business value. So what we talk about from a business perspective is, are we looking to increase brand awareness from a mobile perspective; are we looking to cut costs; are we looking to become more efficient. By walking down this endeavor of mobile analytics, is it going to help position the company better in the long run? Those are some of the things you need to be considering from a value perspective.

The next thing that we recommend is is aligning the mobile analytics with the overall strategy, so whether it be a lead generation audit, part of an auditing process, part of discovery or education for internal purposes, you want to align that back to the organization’s high-level goals and objectives to make sure that it’s part of the plan, and that it’s going to influence what’s happening within the plan.

So the next component would be implementation or to implement with best practices. There are number of analytical platforms as well as mobile analytics platforms you can leverage in order to capture the data. What I say to that is “Great, but at the same time we need to configure, we need to implement best practices.” We need to implement the appropriate filters, the appropriate segments and slice and dice the data, get the cleanest possible view that we can in order to better analyze that information.

So you want to make sure that you’re implementing with best practices regardless of whether or not it’s Google, Webtrends, SiteCatalyst, you name it. You want to make sure that everything is configured appropriately or to the best of its ability.

The next thing that I would say is to measure what matters to the mobile audience specifically, so that you can better impact what’s happening to those customers and for what they’re seeing, whether be resolution, whether it be device, whether it be operating system, you name it. You want to be measuring what matters to that audience, and when we speak to that we talk about the journey. So as an example, you might want to take into account the device, the behavior, the outcomes, and then analysis of the information that’s happening from your mobile audience and consider what’s happening, and take that into account.

The last component of this is to make decisions that impact customers. Ideally, user behaviors simplify the process, make it easier for them, make it a better process overall to help impact their ability to download information, to view information, to make a purchase, to fill out a form, whatever it might be.

Once you get to this process, it’s important that you continue to target, whether it be from a device perspective, whether it be from a platform perspective, you want to target and test what you can to improve and continue to impact customers in the way that they interact with your mobile site, with your site, whether be from an informational perspective or from an eCommerce perspective, to be able to impact those components.

With that being said, my final recommendation is just to do it. Pull yourself together, allocate some time, get the ball rolling, and seize the moment while search traffic is on the rise and people are continuously getting access to mobile. If you have any questions, any comments, don’t hesitate to comment on our blog, to hit us up on Twitter, or to reach out to us direct. Thank you very much, hope you have a good day. Good hunting.

Sequential Messaging in Digital Advertising

January 15, 2014 by Daniel Laws 5 Comments

Defining Sequential Messaging

If you’re a follower of @DaBrianMarket or @DanielLawsJr, you have most likely seen our past tweets about sequential messaging. Sequential Messaging is generally a technique where messages are recorded in a preset order and executed individually based on the each activation of a device (tablet, smartphone, etc.).

So, What’s the big deal with sequential messaging?

Sequential Messaging has an opportunity to leverage the initial user interaction into a micro-conversion and target high quality leads. As an example, a shopper would click on a banner ad on a newspaper site for a new tablet. This action identifies the shopper as being interested in a new tablet and generates a series of sequential messages specific about the new tablet. The series of sequential messages could be on banners, emails, and perhaps in search engines. In some cases, the ad mix can be modified based on the shopper’s engagement with them.

What are the Future Possibilities of Sequential Messaging?

I think the future of sequential messaging is positive but contingent on the availability of technology to executive effective campaigns. I think there’s an opportunity to “connect the dots between digital advertising, TV advertising, mobile and gaming consoles.” It’s going to get easier to customize messages across devices with online tool-based logins, smart TVs, mobile devices, and gaming consoles offering more functionality and capabilities.

Take me for example. I’ve got a Samsung smart TV, Galaxy S4, Kindle, and more. My cell phone, which is connected to my Kindle, can change my TV channel. Thus, there’s no reason advertisers can’t create customized sequential messages across multiple devices. The capabilities of ad technology will be important to align with customer behaviors across multiple devices in order to customize the user’s overall experience with the brand. More specifically, it’s important that we obtain insights from sequential messaging to increase the effectiveness of marketing budgets and the ability to increase lead generation or sales.

What are the Challenges of Sequential Messaging in Digital Advertising?

In my opinion, one the main challenges will be measuring the effectiveness of sequential messaging in digital advertising and optimizing the process. In addition, the measurement of sequential messaging along with A/B or Multivariate testing across multiple devices. With the increasing importance on customer privacy, it will become increasingly challenging to track prospective customers, and with the recent Target data security breach, customers are becoming aware of the negative aspects of data collection and value their privacy. Furthermore, the tracking of sequential messaging will most likely require the tracking of customers’ unique logins as well as combining the data on their behaviors across multiple devices. Without educating customers on the benefits of doing so, it could be seen as intrusive and encounter a legal backlash from customers.

What about Measurement?

Last month in AdWeek, I read an article from Garett Sloane of Omnicom Digital which spoke of “sequential messaging as digital advertising’s next act.” I agree with Sloane’s point that sequential message could be the next step in digital advertising, but the execution requires powerful technology as well as perfect coordination. I think there will be a few businesses that look at sequential messaging as the next buzzword (right next to “big data”).

No matter the approach, it still needs to solve a business problem. Without measureable ad technology and the capabilities to collect the data, we’re going to have challenges measuring whether or not a message is resonating with the “right” customers. The right message, right person, and right time require the right analytical approach to improve the impact that sequential messaging has on delivering return-on-investment.

Is sequential messaging on your organization’s radar? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Highlights from “Calculating Creative” Presentation

November 27, 2013 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

What if we told you your creative resources were hindering your marketing success?

What if the answers you were looking for came from free platforms and tools?

What if we could help you improve your business’s entire creative process?

Well, we can. And it’ll take less than 15 minutes. Learn how data is the key to better creative decisions and more targeted campaigns in a talk given by our President and CEO, Danny Laws, for the American Advertising Federation – Greater Lehigh Valley.

For more information or access to the “director’s cut,” give us a call or drop us a line!

A Guide to Data-Informed SEO Storytelling

September 25, 2013 by Daniel Laws Leave a Comment

How our SEO Tools led us Astray

Experience has shown that for a large portion of business owners, a glaring issue exists with the accepted perception of search engine optimization and the plethora of assistive software suites. Everyone seems to tout that high rankings and “the top spot on Google” are the primary goals associated with an SEO campaign, so vendors make solutions to fit those expectations. The problem is that these tools are proving ineffective at impacting businesses’ actual goals and objectives because they don’t help answer some fundamental questions, including:

Why is the business choosing to explore search engine marketing tactics?
Why are high rankings the primary goal?
In what way(s) do rankings specifically impact future marketing efforts?
How will SEO be justified from a budgeting standpoint?
Where is the connection between SEO and more leads and sales?

Getting Back to Basics with Goals and Objectives

The first step toward finding the answer to the questions above falls to outlining goals and objectives. Generally speaking, these goals and objectives help businesses enhance their “kwan” (And yes, that was a Jerry Maguire reference!). An example of a business goal would be to grow sales. An example of an objective would be to grow sales among new customers through organic search traffic by 25% of the next 12 months. Note the distinct differences here. While goals are very general statements, objectives provide additional context with which appropriate metrics can be identified.

It is critical that all key stakeholders agree and sign-off on the business goals and objectives because they’ll form the foundation for the next step toward data-informed storytelling: identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Regardless of whether you work for an agency or an in-house marketing team, it always boils down to, “Did we make money or lose money as a result of our efforts?” For that, proper measurement planning is essential.

KPI Mapping that Aligns with Goals and Objectives

KPIs represent the way by which progress is measured regarding a marketing campaign. When defining these metrics, it’s important to also identify reasonable thresholds. That way, appropriate action can be taken if the numbers fall above or below your expectations. By aligning the KPIs with the aforementioned goals and objectives, it will help the key higher-ups to see SEO’s tangible value. Figure 1 (below) shows a very generic mapping of a goal and objective with a possible choice of KPI. If you complete this process, it will give you a better understanding of what data needs to be collected to show the impact the SEO is having on your business.

The Case for a Measurement Plan

The fact of the matter is that with all of this data making its way into your SEO campaigns, you’re going to need analytics to effectively capture your metrics and provide a way to visualize progress (and tell a truly impactful story). This will require an approach and a plan of action to accurately collect the data necessary for reporting. One of the most simple, but effective approaches can be found on Occam’s Razor By Avanish Kaushik. Just be sure to thoroughly document what data you’re collecting, how, why, and provide an example of the output. It should help everyone not only understand what you’re trying to show, but also offer them the chance to make changes to the approach if necessary.

Analytics Implementation

Google Analytics is a commonly used solution for analyzing this type of information. It’s important that you implement the measurement plan accurately and evaluate the data that’s being collected for reporting. A good place to start is the setup checklist and starter guide provided by Google. There are also numerous videos available on the Google Analytics YouTube channel.

Reporting

Using GA’s more advanced features as our primary example, there are multiple opportunities to not only streamline your reporting process, but also add deeper dimensions to your data-driven “story.” Creating advanced segments, custom filters, and dashboards can bring to light information you may not have otherwise seen. Exploring deeper into the data you’ve collected can make for more established insights, which lead to greater impact among your audience.

For your SEO campaigns, this could mean creating a dashboard showing correlations between site visit metrics and organic keywords or pages per visit organized by geographical location. With a little analytical know-how, you’ll have no problem tying your data back to your high-level goals and objectives.

Figure 3 and 4 are example of items that might be found in your SEO performance dashboard.

Conclusion

There is a big misconception surrounding SEO for the average uninformed business owner, VP of marketing, or IT professional. On the frontlines, we always seem to hear business professionals talk about rankings, but they rarely care to understand why their business is even paying for or considering paying for SEO services. We still hear that the need for “visits” or more “hits” to the websites is the be-all end-all. Rather than the end in and of itself, SEO provides the means towards achieving unique business goals. The story of this journey from campaigns and tactics to business success is told through data, first and foremost.